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NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 

AND HER SONS 



Illustrated 



A COMPLETE HISTORY OF HER GROWTH AND INFLUENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION, 

TOGETHER WITH SKETCHES AND PORTRAITS OF HER FOUNDERS, PAST 

AND PRESENT OFFICERS; ALSO HER MOST REPRESENTATIVE 

GRADUATES AND RECIPIENTS OF HONORARY DEGREES 



BY 

ERNEST G. SIHLER, Ph. D. 

PROFESSOR OF LATIN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 

BIOGRAPHICAL EDITOR 

ALBERT WARREN FERRIS, A. M., M. D. 

(CLASS OF 78) 

ASSISTANT IN NEUROLOGY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

ASSISTANT TO THE CHAIR OF MEDICINE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 

CONTRIBUTOR TO "YEAR BOOK," "INTERNATIONAL CYCLOPEDIA" 



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BOSTON AND SYRACUSE 

THE MASON PUBLISHING AND PRINTING CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



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UibPBi-y of CoMj'-e.-i^ 
Two CoPfES HtLtivED 



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SEC0.N5 copy. 

ORDER DfVISiO^^ 

AUG 7 190U 






67180 

Copyright, 1899, by 

The Mason Publishing and Printing Co. 

Boston and Syracuse 



TWOCOeiLa wtUtlVfeO, 








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CONTENTS. 

ERA I: 1832-1860. 

Era of Formation and Foundation. 

Opening of Departments of Arts and Science; of Medicine; of Law. Acquisition of 
eminent Instructors. Steady, substantial growth. 



ERA II: 1861-1884. 

Era of Ebb and Flow. 

The Civil War. Foundation of the General Endowment. National Financial Crisis. 
Conservative Policy. Erection of New Medical School Building. Founding of Law 
Library. 

ERA III: 1885-PRESENT. 

Era of Expansion and New Life. 

Organization of Graduate School; of School of Pedagogy. New Endowments. Re- 
moval to University Heights. Erection of Academic Halls and of Dormitories. 
Expeditions to Alaska and Bermuda. Adoption of Four Years' Medical Course. 
Consolidation with the University of the Bellevue Hospital Medical College. Con- 
solidation with the University of the Metropolis Law School. 




HISTORY OF NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, 
1831-1900. 



Motto : " Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect : but I follow after." 

St. Paul, Phil, iii, 12. 




HE relation of an Alma Mater to her alumni or "nurs- 
lings " may fairly be compared to that mixture of moral, 
physical and religious bonds with which a faithful mo- 
ther is regarded by her offspring. Even if she does 
not drive about with coachman and lackeys, still her 
children will love her, because she is their mother. The vicissitudes 
of academic life and academic trials which New York University has 
traversed may well deserve the affectionate sympathy of her alumni. 
And as a fuller fruition of the earlier designs and aims seems to be 
approaching, it has seemed not inopportune to meet the request of 
the publishers for a succinct history of New York University. 

It is remarkable to note that Benjamin Franklin was associated 
with the modest beginnings (1749-50) out of which grew the Univer- 
sity of Pennsylvania. 

Likewise we see that Thomas Jefferson at Monticello devoted the de- 
clining years of his life to the development of plans which grounded 
the University of Virginia (1825). 




Henry M. MacCracken, D.D., LL.D. 
Chancellor 



New York University and Her Sons 




University Building in Waverley Place 



Only five years later Albert Gallatin, who for eight years — from 
1 801-1809 — had been Jefferson's Secretary of the Treasury, took 
a most active interest in the formation of designs intended for an in- 
stitution of learning of freer composition and wider scope than were 
then extant in the city of New York. It was probably premature to 
expect, in the society of 1830, a devotion to academic ideals which far 
transcended their actual needs and comprehension. The delibera- 
tions of the initial stage, the discussions of men who took the initiative, 
began in 1829, and in October, 1830, there was published a "Journal 
of the Proceedings of the Convention of Literary and Scientific 
Gentlemen " held in the common council chamber of the city of New 
York, October, 1830. There were present also Professor Francis 
Lieber, Jared Sparks of Boston, Dr. Gallaudet of Hartford, Dr. 

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New York University and Her Sons 1 1 

Hodge of Princeton, Professor Theodore Woolsey of Yale, and 
others. 

In 1835 was completed the noble Norman- Gothic structure on 
Washington Square, which now is a memory. 

It is difficult to realize that, some time before, a potter's field was 
where later the substantial broad house fronts of the comfortable 
families of the foremost commercial city arose, that the church of 
Chancellor Matthews was in Exchange Place, that the Battery was 
the pride of the city as a promenade, that Madison Square once 
formed the site and ground allotted to the House of Refuge for Ju- 
venile Delinquents. 

Indeed, the thin fringe of population just settling beyond the Alle- 
ghanies, and occupied in material upbuilding, was not prepared as yet 
for any elaborate system oi gradicate instruction. About this time De 
Tocqueville wrote (I, p. 53, Am. ed. of 1845): "Every profession 
requires an apprenticeship, which limits the time of instruction to the 
early years of life. At fifteen they enter upon their calling, and thus 
their education ends when ours begins. Whatever is done afterward, 
is with a view to some special and lucrative object ; a science is taken 
up as a matter of business, and the only branch of it which is attended 
to is such as admits of immediate practical application." There are a 
few exaggerations, but the substantial correctness of this delineation 
may be conceded for that early epoch. Still, it will be a grateful 
task to trace the substantial contributions toward the diffusion of 
human knowledge made under the successive chancellorships of 
Matthews, of Frelinghuysen, of Ferris, of Howard Crosby; the work 
in science by T. W. Draper and his gifted sons ; of Samuel Finley 
Breese Morse; of Elias Loomis the mathematician (1844-60); of 
Tappan Martin and others in philosophy ; of E. A. Johnson in Latin ; 
of Coakley, Bull, in mathematics and engineering ; of Ezra Gillett ; and 
to describe the services of two distinguished members of the present 
faculty, who connect the past with the present, and who have proved 
their devotion to New York University while making contributions to 
human knowledge, the one in the domain of European history, in his 
exhaustive monographs on the history of the Huguenots in France, the 
other in geology. Their devotion, I said, was tested; for in Chancellor 



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New York University and Her Sons 




The Chapel 

Crosby's administration one could not but realize that substantial 
growth in the actual environment was not easily attained, that while 
other foundations had greatly grown in material resources and pros- 
pered, New York University stood still. The chancellor himself con- 
ceived a project to reduce it to a merely examining body of professors, 
constituting an institution like that of London. His views, however, 
were not shared either by the council or the faculty, and in 1881 he 
retired from the administration, maintaining, however, an active inter- 
est through his seat in the council. Besides, the crisis of 1881 taught 
with overwhelming distinctness this necessity : the executive head 
must do this one thing alone. 

Few Americans of the last generation excelled Howard Crosby in 
splendid personal gifts. Few names in America were uttered by a 
greater number of lips with more grateful affection and profound 




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14 New York University and Her Sons 

regard. His unbounded helpfulness, into the practice of which he 
was wont to throw his whole rare personality and varied resources, 
though abused by many who were unworthy ; his faculty of spiritual 
guidance in pulpit or pastoral labor ; his leadership in civic better- 
ment, — all these things made him, when he died, in March, 1891, easily 
the first citizen of New York, a city in which his family could record 
honorable lineage back to the Dutch governors. With generous can- 
dor, some years after 1881, Dr. Crosby on a public occasion, address- 
ing the C\\2ir\ce\\or ad ijitej^m, the Rev. Dr. John Hall, said: "You 
were right, and I was wrong." The eminent preacher and scriptural 
scholar. Dr. John Hall, acted as Chancellor ad interim from 1881-1891. 
In 1884 Dr. Henry Mitchell MacCracken was called from the admin- 
istration of the Western University of Pennsylvania to be professor of 
Philosophy and executive officer at New York University, with the 
title of vice-chancellor ; this in 1891 being changed to full chancellor- 
ship. This wise and energetic administrator saw clearly that the 
University College must leave its cramped urban home. In 1894 the 
removal to the new site was effected. This is an academic home in a 
position of enviable character. There are some twenty-three acres, with 
splendid views north, northwest and west, and east and southwest. It 
is on the high ridge some one hundred and sixty feet above the Har- 
lem River. Inwood lies to the west, with the wooded hills of Wash- 
ington Heights and the noble fagade of the Palisades forming the sky- 
line on the west, Spuyten Duyvil to the northwest, and Kingsbridge to 
the north, the Harlem like a mirror nestling among hills of verdure, 
with the heights of South Yonkers marking the sky-line in the north. 
A hall of languages and a chemical laboratory rapidly arose, the 
latter given by Mr. Wm. F. Havemeyer, temporary structures housing 
the work in physics, in engineering and in biology, the collections 
and resources of these departments being greatly increased ; other 
structures were soon added by noble benefactions, such as Gould Hall, 
a residence building of the most approved modern construction, with 
a fine view sweeping across a great plateau of the borough of the 
Bronx, Long Island Sound, and the ridges of the island to a distance 
of some fifteen or twenty miles. A gymnasium immediately became, 
what it is ever to be, the opportunity for physical training. 




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Gymnastic contests with Wesleyan, Rutgers, Lafayette, and Lehigh, 
and even with all the leading Eastern Colleges and Universities, 
March, '99, palpably proved the soundness of the training here af- 
forded. The Ohio field, with its quarter-mile cinder-track, became the 
scene of track work, of football and baseball. But the fairest and 
most splendid of all the benefactions that came to the New York 
University in its new home is the Memorial Library, a structure of 
purest Renaissance type on the brow of the western slope, in its outer 
periphery of granite providing cabinets for geology and a museum. 
Important changes in the athletic field and in the site of the gym- 
nasium are now (summer, '99) making. The teaching staff has been 
enlarged : with the exception of the professors of Greek and of 
Geology, all other teachers have come since 1884; representing in 
their own training or previous careers New York University, Johns 
Hopkins, Columbia, Princeton, Brown, University of Michigan, the 
University of London, Sheffield Scientific School, the University of 
Chicago, the University of California, the Universities of Berlin, 
Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Oxford, not to forget the University of 
Athens, where Dr. Baird studied long before any American school 
at Athens was conceived. A great many of the professors have well- 
stocked studies in the recitation buildings, where they spend a great 
part of their time and are ever ready for consultation. 

Besides restoring the sound practice of tuition fees, Dr. MacCracken 
brought about a real organic union of the Law School and of the Medical 
School, the latter entering into a corporate union with the corporation 
of Bellevue. A School of Pedagogy working in the new structure at 
Washington Square is in well organized and prosperous activity. 
The work of the Graduate School has been steadily advancing. Its 
teachers, who have in the main had close experience of the best 
graduate work of America and Europe, guard jealously the bestowal 
of the higher degrees. They feel and enjoy the suggestive impulse 
of deeper and wider study and research, and the resultant reaction 
upon the higher ideals of a scholar's work and life, such as are con- 
nected with the work of graduate instruction. The splendid Oriental 
library of La Garde of Gottingen, secured by Prof Prince in 1892; 
the exhaustive Germanic collection given by a new patron of New 




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20 New York University and Her Sons 

York University ; the valuable bequest of the Botta Library, with 
many accessions, will permit New York University to enter its new 
library with a nucleus of some 35,000 volumes. Many benefactions 
by the most generous of New York University's patrons particularly 
provide for scholarships for young men in different parts of the United 
States. The American Philological Association is to hold its thirty- 
first annual meeting at University Heights in July, 1899. Thus, not 
only the Alumni of New York University, but all friends of higher 
education in the metropolitan district, may take a genuine interest in 
the recital of the history of the New York University, of which the 
barest outline has been offered in this brief narrative. 

E. G. SiHLER. 

New York University, 
University Heights. 






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22 New York University and Her Sons 



HENRY M. MacCRACKEN, D.D., LL.D. 

Chancellor of New York University. 

HENRY MITCHELL MacCRACKEN is the son of the Rev. 
John S. and Ehza H. (Dougherty) MacCracken. It was con- 
cerning such men as Dr. MacCracken and his peers that Chauncey 
M. Depew, keen and witty statesman, soliloquized, "Some men are 
born great ; some are born in Ohio." Oxford, Ohio, claims to be the 
town where the Chancellor first saw the lig'ht, on September 28, 
1840. His life work shows that he not only was born able, but has 
achieved greatness and ranks with Ohio's most illustrious sons. In 
1857, before he had reached the age of seventeen years, he was 
graduated from Miami University with the degree of A. B., a com- 
mencement orator in the first third of the class. He immediately 
entered upon the career of teaching which he has followed so success- 
fully all his life. Upon graduating, he became classical teacher in 
Grove Academy, Cedarville, Ohio. A year later he was appointed, 
at the age of nineteen, Superintendent of Schools in South Charles- 
ton, Ohio. Two years thereafter he entered the United Presbyterian 
Theological Seminary at Xenia, Ohio, and was appointed teacher of 
the classics in the High School of that town for a year. The year 
1862-63 he spent at Princeton Theological Seminary, and upon its 
completion he was installed pastor of the Westminster Presbyterian 
Church at Columbus, Ohio. This pastorate he relinquished in 1867 
to go to Germany, where he spent two years in the Universities of 
Tuebingen and Berlin. Upon his return from abroad in 1869, he ac- 
cepted a call to the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church of Toledo, 
Ohio. Here he remained till 1880, when the Western University of 
Pennsylvania elected him Chancellor and Professor of Philosophy. 
But the metropolis needed him. Some wise counselor brought him 
prominently before the executive committee of the Council of the 
University, and in 1884 he accepted an invitation to occupy the chair 

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New York University and Her Sons 23 

of professor of Philosophy with us. In the following year he became 
Vice-Chancellor, and upon the retirement of Dr. Hall, in 1891, he 
became Chancellor, The history of Dr. MacCracken's subsequent life 
is the history of the University during the same period. His energy, 
executive capacity, thrift and wisdom, have brought a new life to New 
York University, and have developed and increased its resources be- 
yond the hopes of its most sanguine friends. From his mental alembic 
this educational philosopher has eliminated with surprising rapidity 
schemes and plans of great value and rapid development. We might 
enumerate the positions of honor he has occupied, the monographs 
and books he has published, the degrees universities have taken 
pleasure in conferring upon him. But the one great achievement 
which stands preeminent in his career at the University consists in 
the removal to its site on the heights of the University College. In 
the olden time the student could use, with discretion and under police 
control, the concrete walks of Washington Square, as any decorous 
citizens can use a public park. But there was not a foot of ground 
upon which he could stand and experience that feeling of college 
spirit which is closely akin to patriotism. He had no campus ; he 
had no recreation court ; there was not an erf in Nieuw Amsterdam, 
or anywhere else, upon which he could gaze and say that it was his 
because it was his college's. Chancellor MacCracken, the genius of 
the new era, has revolutionized the old conditions : he has planted 
the feet of the University men of to-day upon broad acres capping 
Athenian heights and diversified by groves like those of Academe. 
New buildings and dormitories have sprung up, and a vista of pros- 
perity and largely increased usefulness opens before our eyes. 

Of the Chancellor's personal history it is recorded that he was mar- 
ried in 1872 to Catharine, daughter of Rev. Thomas Hubbard, in 
Columbus, Ohio. His children are all collegians : one daughter. Fay 
Mary; and three sons, John H., George G., and Noble H. The 
eldest of his sons, John H., at the age of twenty-four, has recently 
been elected president of Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. 



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New York University and Her Sons 



Prof. CLARENCE D. ASHLEY, LL.D. 



Dean of the Law School of New York University. 




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LARENCE DEGRAND 
ASHLEY,bornJuly4,i85i, 
in Boston, Mass., is the son of Os- 
sian D. Ashley, president of the 
Wabash Railroad, and Harriet A. 
Nash. His great-great-grand- 
father fought at the battle of Ben- 
nington under General Stark, and 
his great-grandfather served un- 
der Washington, and was at West 
Point when Major Andre was 
captured. 

Prof Ashley was prepared for 
college at Phillips Academy, An- 
dover, Mass., and was graduated 
from Yale with the degree of A. B. 
in 1873. During the following 
year he applied himself in banking 
hours to acquiring business experience in his father's banking-house 
in New York City, while throughout the remainder of the day he gave 
private tuition to several young men and prepared them for college. 
He spent the years 1875 to 1878 in Berlin, Germany, where he studied 
the German language and also, as a matriculant at the Berlin Univer- 
sity, pursued courses of study in Roman Law and History. In 1878 
he entered Columbia College Law School, whence he was graduated in 
1880 with degree of LL.B., having already been admitted to the New 
York Bar in 1879. His first law partner was William A. Keener, now 
Dean of the Columbia Law School. The firm of Ashley and Keener 
was dissolved in 1883, when Prof Keener was elected law professor at 
Harvard and removed to Cambridge. In 1887, Prof Ashley became 



New York Universitv and Her Sons 



25 



Prof. EDWARD G. JANEWAY, M.D., LL.D. 



Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. 



PROF. EDWARD G. JANE- 
WAY was born in New Jer- 
sey, August 31, 184 1. He comes 
of a family well known in Middle- 
sex County in that State for the 
merchants, manufacturers, and 
public men in its various branches. 
After being graduated from Rut- 
gers College in i860, he served 
as Acting Medical Cadet, U. S. A., 
in a military hospital in Newark, 
N. J., while pursuing the study 
of medicine. He was graduated 
from the College of Physicians 
and Surgeons (Columbia Uni- 
versity) in 1864, in a class which 
also gave to New York City 
Prof James W. McLane, Dean 
of the Medical Department of Columbia University (College of 
Physicians and Surgeons) ; Prof Henry G. Piffard ('62, New York 
University), who occupies the chair of Dermatology in the University 
Medical Department; the late Prof Thomas T. Sabine, from 1879 to 
1888 professor of Anatomy in the Medical Department of Columbia 
University ; the late Prof Edward C. Seguin, lecturer and professor 
on Diseases of the Nervous System from 1868 to 1887 in the same in- 
stitution ; and Dr. George G. Wheelock, lecturer on Physical Diag- 
nosis in the same institution from 1868 to 1880. Dr. Janeway 
became professor of Physiology and Pathological Anatomy in the 
Medical Department of the University in 1871, relinquishing this chair 
two years later for a smaller professorship in Bellevue Hospital Med- 
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New York University and Her Sons 



Prof. HENRY M. BAIRD, D.D., LL.D. 



Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science. 




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IROF. HENRY MARTYN 
BAIRD, son of the Rev. 
Robert and Fermine O. A. (Du 
Buisson) Baird, was born in Phil- 
adelphia, Pa., January 17, 1832. 
Most of his childhood was spent 
in France and Switzerland. He 
was graduated from the Univer- 
sity in 1850, at the head of his 
class, with the valedictory ora- 
tion. The following two years 
he spent at the University of 
Athens. Returning to this coun- 
try, he pursued theological studies 
for two years at Union Theo- 
logical Seminary in this city and 
for four years at Princeton Semi- 
nary, serving also as tutor in 
Princeton University during the latter period. In 1859 he became 
professor of the Greek Language and Literature in the University, a 
position he still fills with rare ability and success. He was ordained 
to the ministry of the Presbyterian church in 1866, but has never 
presided over a pastorate. Prof Baird is a member of and has been 
an officer of many societies, among which may be mentioned the 
American Philosophical Society ; the American Historical Associa- 
tion ; the American Society of Church History; the Societe de I'His- 
toire du Protestantisme Frangais, Paris; New York Historical Society; 
Harvard Historical Society ; Massachusetts Historical Society ; 
Huguenot Society of America ; and Huguenot Society of London. 
As a teacher, Dr. Baird is painstaking, patient, accurate, and inter- 



New York University and Her Sons 



27 



THE LATE JOHN W. DRAPER, M.D., LL.D. 



Professor of Chemistry, 1838-1882. 



PROF. JOHN WILLIAM 
DRAPER was born at St. 
Helens, England, May 5, 181 1, 
the son of the Rev. John C. 
Draper, a Wesleyan Methodist. 
At the age of eleven he became 
a pupil in a Wesleyan public 
school, under an American head- 
master of some literary celebrity. 
He made such good progress in 
classics and mathematics that he 
was appointed, among others of 
the pupils, to address the Metho- 
dist Conference at Leeds in 1824, 
during the examinations held by 
the ministers to ascertain the 
scholarship of the students. He 
was sent to the University of 
London, upon the opening of that institution in 1829, to study chem- 
istry under Dr. Turner, at that time the most celebrated English 
chemist. Influenced by American relatives, he came to America and 
completed his medical education at the University of Pennsylvania, 
whence he was graduated in 1836 with distinction. The faculty paid 
him the compliment of publishing his inaugural thesis on the diffusion 
of gases through apparently impermeable barriers. This was a 
preliminary paper to a study of the oxygenation of the blood through 
the walls of the pulmonary air-cells. Subsequent publications led to 
his appointment in 1836 as professor of Chemistry and Physiology in 
Hampden-Sidney College, Virginia. Published results of his ex- 
periments in connection with the chemical and mechanical influences 




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New York University and Her Sons 



LESLIE JAY TOMPKINS, LL.M. 



Registrar. 



LESLIE JAY TOMPKINS 
/ was born May 2, 1867, in 
Umpsted Co., Minnesota. When 
he was two years of age his parents 
returned to the East, and his life 
up to the time that he was four- 
teen was spent in work and study 
at Sidney, New York. The years 
of 1882 and 1883 were spent 
in Cazenovia Seminary (New 
York). From there he went to 
Michigan and taught school at 
Clarksville, Mich,, for a period 
of one year. From Clarksville, 
Mich., he went to Plymouth, 
Ind., and taught in the public 
schools of that city for a period 
of one year. He came to New 
York in June of 1886 on a visit to the city, expecting to return to the 
West and continue his teaching. He entered New York University 
in September, 1886, and at the end of that year engaged himself with 
the Pullman Palace Car Company as a conductor, continuing with 
them throughout his entire college course, and for one year and a 
half thereafter. During his college course he maintained a high 
standard, and in June, 1890, received his Bachelor's degree. He is 
a member of the Psi Upsilon Fraternity, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Phi 
Delta Phi (legal). He was assigned the scientific oration at the 
Commencement in 1890, having stood fourth in his class at that time. 
In October, 1890, he entered Columbia Law School, and remained 
there for one year. This was the last year that Professor Dwight 




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